Jack and Molly looked round wonderingly, but could not see any signs of a dog, till their eyes caught sight of a black smudge of paint, which proved on closer acquaintance to be a black dog chained to a red kennel—both painted flat on the ground a few feet inside the gate. The children gazed at each other questioningly; then Glan’s words came back to them, “Humour him, he’s a queer old soul.”
So Molly bent down and pretended to pull the latch on the gate down; she and Jack walked carefully on to the asphalt over the flat gate, then she turned and pretended to close and latch the gate again. As they passed the painted dog, she had another happy idea. “Good dog. Good dog,” she said, and stooped and patted the asphalt.
The old man beamed down upon her. “He’s quite harmless when I tell him it’s all right,” he confided, “but you should just see him when he’s roused. Stand on the step and I’ll tell him there’s a bath-chair round the corner. He hates ’em.”
The children could not see a real step, but spying a painted white square by the front door, they stood on that.
“Now then,” cried the old man, “at ’em, Percy, at ’em! There’s a bath-chair a-comin’ round the corner!”
There was a dead silence while the painted dog gazed with unseeing eyes up at the sky, and a little breeze rustled in the tree-tops.
“Isn’t he furious?” chuckled the old man, beaming proudly from the dog to the children. “Go it, old boy! Give it ’em!”
As he seemed to expect an answer to his question, Molly said: “He—he—certainly looks very fierce, doesn’t he?”
“That’s nothing to what he can look,” said Mr Papingay, obviously delighted at Molly’s reply. “But, come inside, come inside.”